Page 3 of Three-Inch Teeth

Someday, Joe hoped, the legal system would rule one way or another in a definitive way. In the meantime, corner-crossing would remain a thorny issue that pitted sportsmen against landowners. And it put him and other game wardens in the middle of the dispute.

When he left their camp, Joe wasn’t sure he’d convinced them not to try it.

*

SO WHEN CLAY Hutmacher’s name appeared on his cell phone screen, Joe fully expected to hear the foreman sound off about the three hunters who had trespassed onto the Double D.

Instead, Hutmacher said, “I’m sorry to bother you, Joe, but I’m trying to track down my son. Have you seen or heard from him in the last twenty-four hours?”

Joe paused for breath and leaned against the stout mottled trunk of an ancient ponderosa pine tree. Daisy, his aging yellow Labrador, used the opportunity to rest as well and quickly collapsed near his feet.

“No,” he said. “I haven’t seen much of anyone this morning except elk hunters. I’m on the south side of Wolf Mountain right now.”

“Well, damn,” Hutmacher said. “I’ve been calling his phone since last night and he hasn’t picked up. That’s not like him.”

“Is there an emergency?” Joe asked.

“Naw, nothing like that. He’s way too old for me to be checking up on him, but he has the only spare set of keys to one of our flatbed trucks that we need today. Plus, it doesn’t look like he slept in his room last night.”

Joe thought about that, considering the implications. Clay Junior was seeing his oldest daughter, Sheridan, and the relationship seemed to be getting much more serious than Joe wanted to accept or acknowledge. Sheridan had her own apartment in town, so he and Marybeth didn’t always know what was going on with her.

If Clay Junior hadn’t slept in his own bed …

“I’ll keep an eye out for him,” Joe said. “I’ll check with Sheridan as well.”

That was what Clay was asking, Joe knew.

“I appreciate that,” the foreman said.

“On another subject, I met three Pennsylvania hunters yesterday who showed me the ladder they intended to use to access your public land.”

“Corner-crossers?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“You didn’t arrest them?” Hutmacher asked.

“Nope,” Joe said. “We’ve had this discussion, Clay.”

“Goddamn them. If I catch them on the ranch, they better hope their health insurance is up-to-date.”

“I didn’t hear that,” Joe said.

“The boss has had it with them, you know,” Hutmacher said, referring to the wealthy owner of the ranch, Michael Thompson, who lived most of the year in Atlanta, where his telecom firm was headquartered. Thompson and his young wife, Brandy, visited the ranch only a couple of times a year to hunt trophy elk and tour it during the summer months, but when they did he always made sure to harangue Joe about keeping trespassers off his ranch.

“I know,” Joe said.

“Where were they?”

Joe described where the Pennsylvanians had camped on the northern border of the Double D, about six miles from the highway.

“I’m going to send a couple of my guys out there on ATVs,” Hutmacher said. “If we catch ’em, we’ll hold them in place until the sheriff arrives to arrest the bastards.”

Joe sighed. It wasn’t really necessary to say that the Twelve Sleep County Sheriff’s Department might not respond with their best—or at all. Since Sheriff Scott Tibbs had retired seven months before, the office was in turmoil. Two of their best deputies, Ryan Steck and Justin Woods, had resigned and left the state for new law enforcement jobs. An interim sheriff had been selected by the county commissioners: a woman named Elaine Beveridge, a former county commissioner. Unfortunately, Beveridge had made it a habit never to answer her phone or leave her desk. A new election was coming up, and Judge Hewitt had hand-selected a candidate named Jackson Bishop, and he was backing Bishop publicly and financially. At the moment, however, the office was completely and totally adrift.

Joe didn’t know Bishop at all. His past relationships with local sheriffs had been … rocky. Joe and the rest of the locals were grateful there had been no county-wide crime spree in the interim.

“I gotta go,” Hutmacher said.

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